CSI: Hyrule
by Black Peregrin
Summary: My first CSI fan fiction.  When a man is found dead on the floor of a bar, Link and his CSI team begin investigations, but what they discover surprises everyone.


CSI: Hyrule

A man in a beaten, dirty, brown leather jacket got off of his horse in the town center of Hyrule.  
His name was Neal Flint. He patted the horse's mane, tied it up to a post, and walked into the bar across the street. "Silver Arrow Tavern" read the bar sign.  
The man walked over to the bar, sat on a chair, took off his jacket, and waited.  
He was expecting someone to come.  
Someone that owed him money.  
_A lot _of money.

---

Detective Link of the Hyrule crime lab knelt over the body of Neal Flint. After 30 years of fighting evil outside of Hyrule, Link decided to come back to his home town and fight evil there.  
But working in crime scene investigation as a field agent was not what he had expected.  
But hey, it payed well, and he still got to put criminals to justice.

The cadaver was bloody, with the neck slit, and several stab wounds.  
_Hello, what's this?_ thought Link as he turned over the man's head.  
An arrow was lodged in his skull. The rod was apparently broken off, nowhere to be found.  
Until now.  
"Aha!" Link exclaimed, as he discovered the shaft under a table.  
"I now know why they call this the 'Silver Arrow Tavern'," muttered Link as he stood up and looked around.

Back at the crime lab, Link walked over to the body of Neil Flint. He shuddered. The morgue always made his blood turn cold.  
The woman examining the body looked up.  
"Find anything of interest, Alex?" Link questioned.  
"Well, the blood sample we took contained trace amounts of _Cyalide_, a deadly poison. That seems to be the cause of death."  
Link paced back and forth. "Hmm... so our man had his throat slit, got stabbed twice in the chest, and shot with an arrow to the head. And between all that, the cause of death was a poison."  
"And get this," continued Alex. "We took a look at the broken arrow shaft. We found a fingerprint. Mr. Julius Evren."

---

"I tell you, I didn't do nothing!" proclaimed Evren, pounding his hands on the table in the interrogation room.  
"That's not what your fingerprint tells us," retorted Link. "Are you familiar with Mr. Neil Flint?"  
Evren looked puzzled. "Yeah, dump of a guy. Stole 40 gold pieces from me, then got drunk off the money. I wish he was dead."  
"That's just the problem, Mr. Evren. Neil Flint _is_ dead."

The door to the interrogation room swung open. One of the lab assistants, Jeff Ross, stood panting in the doorway.  
"Link," he huffed, "we may have found something. You need to come and see it."

---

"What am I looking at?" asked Link as he held a piece of plastic with a tweezer.  
Jeff explained. "I think that the arrow was Evren's, but he didn't fire it. When I was examining the shaft more closely, I found this piece of plastic ripped on the tail of the arrow. My guess is that whoever shot Mr. Flint wore plastic gloves in order to not give him or herself away."  
Link nodded, now understanding.  
"However," Jeff continued, "that plan backfired when the plastic glove ripped on the tail of the arrow. I turned the piece upside down and guess what I found?"  
"A fingerprint. So, have you matched that fingerprint to anyone?"  
"Not yet. Meanwhile, I got a call from the Sam and Jules, out at the crime scene. They need you to be there."

Already walking towards the door, Link sighed and put on his sunglasses. It was going to be a long day.

As Link climbed on to his horse and rode to the crime scene, he wondered something. Was he really cut out for this job?  
He shook away the notion. He was helping to put bad people in jail. It was fighting crime, protecting the city he loved.  
But was he cut out for it?  
The thoughts disappeared as he approached the bar, surrounded by police horses and yellow tape.

---

Julia Rhodes and Samuel Waren were Link's two best field agents. They could pick out a single piece of dandruff on a white horse. They could find a single drop of blood in a whole glass of red wine. They were the best of the best. Top class investigators.  
Link walked over to the two, standing near the tables with another man. He looked 40 or 50, balding, with a black mustache. He wore a jean jacket, and was currently snacking on some pretzels.  
Before Link could wonder what he had to do with anything, Jules had an explanation-  
"We think this man may have been an eye witness to the murder."

The man sat in front of Link, Jules, and Sam at a booth in the bar. He chewed another pretzel, washed it down with a swig of beer, and told his story.

"Well, it was a clear Thursday night, during the big jousting tournament, and the bar was pretty much empty. I was sitting on a stool at the counter hitting on the bar girl. So this guy, Neil Flint I guess, comes in, sits at a booth, and orders two vodkas and three packs of peanuts. Then he waited there for like half an hour, until this other guy, small but muscled, and sits down across from him. They sat there for like 5 minutes, then started talking. It was hushed for a bit, but then it got louder. They were arguing fiercely, one saying something about money owed, the other saying something about the service not being satisfactory, and not going to pay the full price. I think that guy was Flint.  
So the other guy stood up, and the lights went out.  
When we managed to put up lanterns, Neil Flint was dead."

Link sat there, pondering what he just heard.  
Jules broke the silence.  
"Excuse me mister, but what is your name?"  
"Jake. Jake Turnstone."  
"Can we count on you to tell this in court?" inquired Link.  
"Sure. Go ahead."  
And with that said, Turnstone stood up, and walked out of the bar.

Link rubbed his eyes, tired, and reviewed what they had so far.  
"Okay, so what we have is that Mr. Flint was hanging around in the bar. Whoever he was waiting for showed up a while after he came, and they started talking. My guess is that they were talking about a business deal, and Neil Flint double-crossed his partner."  
Sam, starting to catch on, added, "So his partner killed him."  
Jules interrupted. "No, he didn't. He threw his knife at the lights, killing them, then stabbed Mr. Flint and slit his throat. But that didn't kill him, did it?"  
"No, the arrow did," concluded Sam.  
"But," disagreed Link, "how did the arrow get into the bar?"  
Jules told him. "We found a hole in the window, broken from the outside. We tested shooting an arrow through a glass window in the lab, and the results were almost identical."  
"So the arrow came from outside the bar, from a sniper maybe. Or someone who just had a problem with our Mr. Flint. So whoever last touched the arrow must've killed our man, meaning that..."  
At that moment, Link's cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. Jeff.  
He picked it up.  
"Yes?"  
"We found another fingerprint! Julius Evren was not the last person to touch the arrow!"

Back at the lab, Jeff explained.  
"I was examining the arrow, and when I did, some paint chipped away. I noticed something on the wood, so i chipped away a bit more of the paint, and then dusted the shaft. I got another fingerprint."  
"And so?" asked Link, curious.  
Jeff swung around in his swivel chair, pointing to the computer screen.  
"Nothing yet. It's still searching."  
Link looked stumped.  
"But then how did Julius Evren's latex glove get stuck on the arrow?"  
"Ah, now this is the interesting part! After discovering the painted-over fingerprint, I examined the glove piece, and found this."  
He held up the piece of glove, dusted for fingerprints. Squinting at it, Link didn't see anything. Until Jeff used a pencil and pointed out a pattern at the top of the glove.  
"Another fingerprint." Link understood now. "So, are you matching that print?"  
"Already did. Same fingerprint as the one under the paint."  
"Now all we have to do is wait for the results."  
Link turned to go.  
"I'll be in my office. Call me if you need me."

Link sat at his desk. Well, maybe "sat" isn't a good word. His head rested on old case files, and he gently breathed, asleep.  
It had been a long day.  
But it wasn't over yet.  
Jeff barged into the room, waving pieces of paper, presumably the lab results.  
"We got the results! The person is... oh. Sorry."  
Link glared up at him with tired, bloodshot eyes. He moaned, then picked himself up.

"We finally matched the two fingerprints, the one under the paint and the one on the glove," Jeff explained.  
"And?" Link asked, sipping a cup of coffee. Black, with mint.  
"They're the same person."  
He held up a sheet with a profile of a man. Daniel Camerson.  
"Two hit-and-runs, a murder, and an armed robbery. Lives in the Strip District, on 217 East Marlin Street," read Link.  
"Yeah, we believe he's our unknown associate."  
Link sipped his coffee. "Bring this Mr. Camerson in. I'd like to talk to him."

Link, Daniel Camerson, Julius Evren, and Jake Turnstone sat across from each other at a round table in the interrogation room.  
"You may be wondering why you're sitting at this table," began Link. "Well, you're all suspects in a murder case. The murder of Neil Flint."  
"I tell you! I didn't do it!" shouted Evren, standing up and pounding his fist on the table.  
"Sit down, Julius," said Link cooly.  
"You all had a reason to kill Mr. Flint," he continued nonchalantly. "Evren, Neil owed you money. A great deal of money. And you didn't like him in the first place. You could've easily been with him in the bar, blew out the lights, then stabbed him. And, just to make sure that he didn't get up again, you could've hired a sniper to take him out with a poisoned arrow. That's where you come in, Camerson."  
"Preposterous! I didn't do anything! I can't even fire a bow!"  
"But... " began Link, "Mr. Turnstone here is who really did it."  
"What? I was just a witness... I swear!"  
"Swear on what? Neil Flint's dead body? No, I can prove that you did it. You just lost a divorce settlement, am I right?"  
"I'm not answering anything!"  
"And Neil Flint, attorney at law, was the lawyer who separated you and the wife who hated you. Am I right?"  
Turnstone began sweating.  
Link, on a roll now, continued. "You were angry at him. Angry enough, in fact, to, when the bar tender wasn't looking, cut off the lights, and stab Flint and cut his throat. Then, using a napkin as to not leave fingerprints, you took an arrow from the quiver of Mr. Camerson, Neil's bar companion, dropped some Cyalide on to it, which you conveniently carry around with you, and stuck it into the head of our Mr. Flint!"  
"Then you took a bottle of beer and through it out the window, to make it look like an arrow crashed through it. Which is why my team was puzzled to find broken glass outside the bar under the window!"  
Link then held up a plastic crime scene bag with a broken bottle in it.  
"Can you explain to me why we found your fingerprints on this bottle next to the broken glass outside the bar? And can you explain to me why you have a bottle of Cyalide poison with some of the liquid missing in your pack? Well, can you?"  
A gun shot went off, hitting the wall of the room.  
Evren and Camerson lept up and grabbed Jake's arms. Link stood up and walked over to where they and the room guard were holding Turnstone. He looked into Jake's eyes, and Jake turned away.  
Then, facing the guard and the two other suspects, he said,  
"Evren, Camerson, you're both free to go. Guard, take this man into custody."  
And with that, Link walked out of the room.  
Stepping into the light, he put on his glasses, and smiled.  
Maybe he was cut out for this job, after all.


End file.
